It can often be difficult for emergency responders or minimally trained medical personnel to detect a patient having a stroke or detect a patient who is about to have a stroke. For instance, medics, such as paramedics, emergency service (“EMS”) personnel, or emergency medical technician (“EMT”) personnel are often unable to readily detect whether a patient has experienced a stroke. Often, medics will take a patient to the nearest hospital, which may not be able to provide care to stroke patients. For instance, only about 1 in 7 hospitals are currently configured as stroke centers.
Currently, a computerized tomography (CT) scan is often the only objective method regularly used to detect whether a patient has experienced a stroke. But, a CT scanner can be difficult to incorporate into tools an emergency responder or other patient care provider may regularly use, such as an ambulatory vehicle, urgent care center, or general practitioner doctor's office. Therefore, pre-hospital providers often only have subjective clinical exams to rely upon for the detection of a stroke in a patient, which are in large part dependent on the skill and experience of a particular care provider.